Tag: reform

Winners in the pension reform debate? Not workers and not NJ taxpayers

Tom Moran says it took “real leadership” for the state Senate to change the state’s pension and benefit rules.

I’d call it shortsighted — and not because it has angered the state’s public worker unions.

The problem with the reform bill, which passed today, is that it accelerates the race to the bottom. The argument being made is that public worker benefits must be brought in line with private sector ones, that the public workers are getting a free ride paid for by the rest of us. It is a brilliant move, of course, because it divides workers, pitting them against each other and ending any chance that workers will act in unison and demand better retirement and health benefits.

Instead, we have private sector folks demanding that public worker benefits be gutted, that they be made to deal with the same crappy benefits offered by the private sector.

The problems we face were created by state legislators and governors of both parties who refused to pay what was needed into the state pension fund over the last two decades and who have spent longer than that pretending that we can expand services without asking anyone to pay.

And now that the bill has come due, we expect the court clerk and the cop on the beat to cover the tab.

We should be demanding that private sector workers get the same benefits as public workers, that we get the same pension benefits and that the rich — who are paying less in taxes now and who are raking in record profits — cover the costs. That can’t happen as long as we scapegoat unions and public sector workers.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Going after the gas companies

Legislation that would cut aid to oil companies appears dead, thanks to a coalition of Republicans and oil state Democrats. A minority of Senators, in fact, have scuttled legislation that would end subsidies for the most profitable industry in the United States.

The lessons from this?

  • Big oil — and big business in general — has far more power than voters and consumers, thanks in part to the industry’s ability to spend massive amounts of money on political campaigns and buy candidates’ loyalty.
  • The Senate system is undemocratic, both because it gives as much power to small states with little population as it does to larger states, and because it allows the filibuster and secret holds.
  • We need a massive realignment of our politics that shifts power back to the citizenry — reform of the campaign finance system, constitutional checks on corporations, reconfiguration of the Senate, an end to the electoral college and to the two-party system.

The most important lesson, however, is that we cannot wait for government to fix things. Our elected representatives only react to threats to their jobs so we have to organize (civil disobedience and lobbying) and run aggressive primary and third-party campaigns designed to do what the Tea Party has done to the Republicans — pull the Democrats to the left.

  • Send me an e-mail.
  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Tax cap still a bad idea

The governor spoke before a joint-session of the state Legislature today and reiterated his desire to see a constitutional amendment be placed on the ballot that would limit tax increases to 2.5 percent — or, barring that, a state law that would do the same.

Gov. Chris Christie calls it tax relief, but it really is nothing more than an abrogation of executive and legislative responsibilities and an admission of failure.

Property taxes have been and continue to rise in New Jersey, driven upward by a mix of bad policy and the high cost of health insurance. The bad policy part — a belief that we could avoid making hard decisions without paying the cost of those decisions, cannot be addressed by a cap; rather, it takes one of the decisions out of the hands of the people we’ve elected and sent to Trenton — or that we have sent to town hall.

The problem in New Jersey is not just out-of-control spending. A good chunk of the money the state spends is on programs its citizens want: Good schools, police officers, open space, etc. The problem is that the state government has ignored the revenue side of the ledger for years, preferring to offset rising costs with one-shot gimmicks and magical sleight-of-hands that delayed the day of reckoning.

For 15 years, for instance, governor after governor has shorted the state pension fund, which reduced expenditures in the short-term, but shorted the fund for the longhaul.

We have sold roads from one the state to the Turnpike Authority, borrowed agagainst a settlement with the tobacco industry, and so on until we had run out of shell games to play.

All the while, property taxes continued to rise, angering taxpayers and leaving the state in the lurch.

The governor’s response has not been to put the state on sound fiscal footing, though he has talked as if that is his goal. His budget is balanced using an assortment of tricks — pension shortfall, anyone? — that are no different than those used by his predecessors. And now he wants to enact the biggest gimmick of all, an artificial cap that removes all fiscal flexibility from elected officials. That sounds good now but, as the folks in California and Colorado and elsewhere are finding out, it is going to come back to bite us hard on the ass in the future.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Putting the income tax on the table

I’m glad to see the League of Municipalities, which has too often failed to stand up for low-income New Jerseyans, attempt to put an expanded income tax on the table. I’ve long thought that shifting the burden of education funding from local property taxpayers to a broadbased income (and corporate tax) made the most sense.

I understand the concerns being raised by Mary Forsberg of New Jersey Policy Perspective — we’ve talked about them in previous interviews — and I think they need to be considered. But the status quo is unsustainable and we have to start talking about different ways of doing things and paying for things in New Jersey.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.